


Heliotropism

by wobblycompetencies



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Aussie!Orson Krennic, Intimacy and disability, M/M, Medical Accuracy, Paraplegia, Physical Disability, Recovery, Sex and Disability, Wheelchair Use, spinal cord injury
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-10-18 06:55:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10611594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wobblycompetencies/pseuds/wobblycompetencies
Summary: “Really,” he said, to underline the point, because Poe was looking a little doubtful. “I’m in no rush here. Whatever you want to do, or not do, is fine. I’m just...enjoying spending time with you.”"I’m not in a rush, exactly, I just want – " Poe normally was able to state his mind with little angst or uncertainty; now, he looked faintly exasperated with himself. "I do want to find out what I stillcando. Not all at once, though. And I don't know what it’ll look like, or – or how long it's gonna take for me to get there."Luke reached for Poe's hand where it was drumming restlessly on the tabletop, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Find out together?"Luke Naberrie, RN, and ex-Alliance Air Force Captain Poe Dameron negotiate dating and intimacy after spinal cord injury.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dolly_Bassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolly_Bassett/gifts).



> This would never have seen the light of day without the unflagging encouragement and the loving, perceptive beta of [Dolly_Bassett](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dolly_Bassett/pseuds/Dolly_Bassett). The Nurse!verse is her sandbox. Thanks for letting me play in it with ya, Limey.
> 
> Thanks as well to jellyfishfire (on tumblr) and [extraneous-accessories](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extraneous_accessories/pseuds/extraneous_accessories) for cheerleading the rough draft - and then for reading it all over again when it doubled in length.
> 
> And of course, Poe/Luke wouldn't exist (or I wouldn't ship it to the unwholesome extent that I do now) were it not for [leupagus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leupagus/pseuds/leupagus) and her seminal fic [ To the sky without wings](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5609887/chapters/12925093).
> 
> We've sought to render the medical details surrounding Poe's injury, his rehab, and functional outcomes as accurately as possible; I will do my best to remedy any errors if noted in the Comments section.

**heliotropism** _n._ (Bot) the growth of plants or plant parts (esp. flowers) in response to the stimulus of sunlight, so that they turn to face the sun.

 

 

_“I think we should do it,” Luke says immediately._

_After all this time he can apparently still surprise Poe, who goggles at him slightly over the kitchen counter, currently adjusted for Luke’s height. “Wait – you do?”_

_“I think it’s a good idea. And, who knows – it could be fun.”_

_“Right._ Fun _,” Poe repeats incredulously. He turns his wheelchair away from his laptop to face Luke, who is assembling sandwiches on the opposite side of the kitchen._

_They’re both in shorts and t-shirts for the weekend, taking refuge indoors from the late-afternoon blaze of the Tatooine summer. If Luke looks out the window, beyond a clump of cacti and penstemons, he can just about make out the black smudge of BB, passed out on the stone flagstones under the garden bench. Dog days of summer, indeed._

_“So...what part, exactly, about sharing our sex lives with the Internet gets you off?” Poe wants to know._

_Luke rolls his eyes. “Nurse, remember? The words ‘public health education’ are_ very _sexy to me. And it’s not really_ about _us, is it – read me back some of the questions Mace sent again?”_

_Poe turns back to the kitchen table. “He says they keep getting; ‘I’d like to start dating again but I’m scared of what will happen when sex comes up.’  ‘How can I help my partner feel desirable again?’ ‘Am I ever going to have an orgasm again?’ ‘I’d like to be intimate, but spasticity is a real problem’.” He laughs a little at the last one. “Amen, brother. Or sister. Remember that time I almost broke your nose?”_

_Luke raises his eyebrows, and Poe sighs. “I just– didn’t these people get any kind of counselling in rehab?”_

_“Were you ready to hear it, then?” Luke asks mildly, and Poe’s face says volumes._

_Luke turns back to his back-of-the-fridge foray, searching for pickles and finding an ancient jar of sundried tomatoes instead. He continues, “All I’m saying is that there’s obviously a real need for it. And weren’t_ you _the one at the_ Access _conference who told that woman to stop pussyfooting around and just ask you about the sex thing?”_

_“Well, yeah, but–”_

_“And what about the, uh–” Luke waves a butter knife vaguely, rummaging mentally for the anecdote. “The guy who came up to you afterward and asked you if you’d be able to speak at his rehab centre in... Hoth, right?”_

_“I’m not going to Hoth, I’ll be eaten by polar bears.”_

_“Well, there you go, then. You could just send him a video link,” Luke points out reasonably, adding, “Are we out of pickles?”_

_“Yeah, think so. And first off_ _– speaking at the odd conference is_ not _the same thing as putting yourself out there for Youtube to….ooze over.” Poe waves his hand demonstratively. “Second: I’m not Mace Windu’s pet para-speaker. Even if he_ was _the man that taught me how to put on pants. I’m just saying, why can’t he ask some of the other guys to step up?”_

_“At a guess, probably because he knows that if you set an example, others will follow,” Luke says slowly, thinking of the guys in question. “You sort of have that effect on people. And I don’t think Mace considers you a pet anything_ _– he’s asking you because you’re_ good _at this, and you could reach a lot of people. Plus, you know, the whole ‘Yavinese Adonis’ thing.” He decides the sandwich is getting a bit out of hand and slaps a slice of bread on top with finality._

_“_ Half- _Yavinese. Don’t leave the Mandaloreans out, Dadiji will know about it. And flattery will get you nowhere, Naberrie,” Poe warns, but his mouth is quirking. “_ If _I agreed to do this...Q and A...thing, you’d be doing it too, remember? Mace was pretty clear that they wanted to get”_ _– he turned back to the email, quoting_ _– “ ‘a couple’s perspective on sex and disability’.’”_

_“Oh, you bet. I’d give it the authority that it needs,” Luke says seriously._

_One dark eyebrow rises. “Oh, yeah?"_

_Luke swallows a grin.  “Oh, yeah. People trust nurses_ loads. _”_

_“See,” Poe rests his elbows on the table, looking academic, the way Luke imagines he does addressing a room full of R and D engineering nerds at work. “The correct thing to say was ‘the authority vested in me from having sex with you for the past five years’. That is, if you did, in fact, want to have sex with me_ ever again. _”_

_“Oh,_ that _authority. I thought that went without saying.”_

_“Hmm.” Poe looks barely mollified, but is eyeing Luke’s creations hungrily. “One of those sandwiches is for me, right? No weird cream cheese?”_

_“Also goes without saying. Does that mean you’ll think about it?” Luke carries the plates to the table._

_“I’ll think about it.” Poe shuts the laptop, drumming his fingertips on the kitchen table._

.

**Five Years Ago**

When the subject of sex came up, Luke was mostly just relieved that Poe was able to talk frankly about it.

They were in a discreet restaurant booth, at an unpretentious place midway between Luke’s bungalow and Poe’s university-area apartment, and Luke was half-surprised to find himself in the grip of the warm giddiness that he remembered from this part of dating: the conversation that went, with subtle variations, “This is going well and I like you a lot, and I hope you’re feeling the same way.”

Luke was, in fact, and said as much – but then Poe was running his hand through his hair, looking for the first time that evening a bit unsure of himself.  Luke still wasn’t sure how much of Poe’s confidence was innate and how much was armour, a brave face he was putting on, but it was undeniably attractive.

"I was...a pretty physical guy, before," Poe said slowly. "Still am, I think – or, you know, could be. But I need to know if you can wait for me to... get there."

"As long as you need," Luke had agreed, easily, and without hesitation. He wondered a bit about that, after; it sounded almost like he was making a promise to this man, whom he was still for all intents and purposes getting to know personally instead of...well, professionally.

A little over twelve months ago, Captain Poe Dameron of the Alliance Air Force had been just another casualty on the Ortho/Neuro Unit at Mos Eisley West, where Luke was one of the charge nurses. Open femoral fracture, pulverised tenth thoracic vertebra. Enough residual movement and sensation below the waist to be labelled, unflatteringly, an “incomplete” t-ten:  headed, almost certainly, for a lifetime in a wheelchair.

Poe had been exceptional in the manner he had come to them – a spectacular crash in a flaming fighter jet, rather than the usual automobile and sports accidents – but otherwise, two surgeries later he had passed into the arms of inpatient rehab in the usual fashion of young men rendered suddenly paraplegic: superficially patched up, but suspended somewhere in that no-man’s land between shock and grief.

The hospital complex was vast, and Luke hadn’t expected to cross paths with the man again, but he had. A chance encounter in the cafeteria; a brief conversation. He didn’t think much of it at the time, beyond the rare, genuine pleasure of seeing a former patient doing and looking well.

He _certainly_ hadn’t expected to meet him again ten months later, on the street outside Luke’s regular coffee haunt, much less with the dog that his brother-in-law had just washed out of service training trotting happily at his side.

Luke had been told, once, that luck was only probability taken personally, but what were the _chances_?

BB had recognized Luke straight off and immediately nosed the ‘walk’ button on the pedestrian crossing, pulling Poe after her, barking joyously  – rather justifying Han’s decision to fail her as a service dog and put her up for adoption as a “dangerously smart” pet. (Poe did say that when he’d answered the ad, Han had plenty of warnings attached, including the caution that he’d need to put childproof locks on low cupboards.)

Luke had bought Poe coffee that day, won over first by the charm of the circumstance, then by the company. Two weeks later, at the same table in the Hive, Poe had leaned back in his chair, eyes warm and earnest, and asked, “Can I buy you a drink sometime, Luke?”

“You mean other than coffee?” Luke had blurted. _Smooth_ , _Naberrie._

“Other than coffee,” Poe agreed, eyes crinkling as he smiled. “If you’d like to _–_ unless I’m reading this entirely wrong.” A shadow crossed his face, then. “You’re...allowed to, right?”

The hospital’s policy _–_ and that of Luke’s regulatory body _–_ was quite clear about matters where current patients were concerned; with ex-patients, lines became blurred, and factors had to be weighed. That night Luke had phoned a former colleague from his old hospital in Coruscant, now a senior nursing administrator, and laid out the situation as objectively as he could _–_ and he was relieved that, away from the warm, dark glance of Poe’s eyes, he could be clinical about things.

“I’d say you’re in the clear, Luke,” L’ulo had yawned, eventually. “Let’s look at what we’ve got: it’s been a year, and he’s not likely to end up in your care again. You didn’t give him any preferential treatment or act in any way outside of the bounds of your role at the time. And we’ve established that he wasn’t chasing after you while he was in hospital, yes?”

“I doubt that was at the top of his mind,” Luke had replied, honestly, thinking of Poe’s state at the time. “Or mine.”

“And you’ve felt comfortable enough becoming friendly with him, now _–_ that gut feeling says something. He’s taken a pretty hard knock, but he’s resilient enough to be moving on with his life; he seems like he’s in a good place right now to make his own judgment calls. And now he’s the one initiating something further. I’d say: talk to your boss, and go for the drink. In that order.”

So Luke had, and they did, and now here they were: in a restaurant booth, discussing going to bed with one another over spiced coffee. And while promises at this point seemed unwise on the face of it, the truth was that even with L’ulo’s advice, Luke would never have said ‘yes’ to Poe’s offer of drinks in the first place if he hadn’t felt a strange certainty about him. Just as he never would have said ‘yes’ if he had thought for a moment that there had been anything more between them, over a year ago.

Luke didn’t consider himself a saint, no matter what they said about his profession, but he was fairly sure that he wasn’t _that_ sort of man. What he _was_ , though, was older than Poe by about fifteen years, ten years divorced, and in no way eager to jeopardize whatever was unfolding between them now by hustling the other man into bed, much less on the fourth date.

“Really,” he said, to underline the point, because Poe was looking a little doubtful. “I’m in no rush here. Whatever you want to do, or not do, is fine. I’m just...enjoying spending time with you.”

"I’m not in a rush, exactly, I just want – " Poe normally was able to state his mind with little angst or uncertainty; now, he looked faintly exasperated with himself. "I do want to find out what I still _can_ do. Not all at once, though. And I don't know what it’ll look like, or _–_ or how long it's gonna take for me to get there."

Luke reached for Poe's hand where it was drumming restlessly on the tabletop, and squeezed it reassuringly. "Find out together?"

“Okay.” Poe’s smile in response was like sunrise on the desert – at least, that was the slightly maudlin thought that crossed Luke’s mind as Poe took a deep breath and said again,  “Okay. That sounds good.”

Poe didn’t take his hand back right away. Eventually, the waiter came to shoo them politely out into the Mos Eisley night.

.

Poe invited Luke into his apartment for the first time a week or so after that dinner conversation. Looking around the living room, Luke had the impression that it was a space that Poe was uncertain how to fill – and little wonder, after his dozen-odd years spent in an Air Force officer’s mess. There were some photographs arranged in defensive huddles on the low shelves, a new television and sound system, a desk. The walls were starkly bare.

BB, all of a year old, seemed to have accumulated more in the way of personal possessions, alternately jealously guarded and proudly displayed, than Poe had in thirty-two years’ worth of living.

“I’ve never had a dog before,” Poe had confessed to Luke, looking a bit sheepish at the plethora of squeaky balls and soft toys. “I may have gone a tad overboard at PetSmart.”

The only sparks of personality in the living room at first glance were the acoustic guitar on its stand and an eye-wateringly bright red couch – which Luke liked immediately, after blinking at its incongruousness. (Red, for Luke, is home and comfort: the wagon that he and Leia had ridden in to and from school when they were small, the splash of geraniums on Owen and Beru’s front steps. Luke’s first motorbike. The faded paint on the side of Yoda’s hilltop clinic in Dagobah.)

“I know what you’re thinking,” Poe grinned, making the transfer from chair to couch with an easy, economic motion. “Man’s got a red couch, he must have big plans.”

Luke raised an eyebrow. “Do you?”

Poe kept his DVDs in an old CD case, of all things, and was flipping through it. “Hell, yes. _Arsenic and Old Lace._ Cary Grant. Perfect for a quiet evening in. Which is what the nurse ordered, right?”

Poe, it turned out, had a fondness for films made before Luke was even born. Where Luke and movies were concerned, though, if it was past eight in the evening the outcome was inevitably the same, no matter what was playing –

“You’re falling asleep !” Poe’s voice was tinted with outrage.

“'m not,” Luke protested. (He definitely was; it had been a 7 a.m. shift kind of week.)

“You’re sawing logs."

“Nope.”

“Dead to the world.”

“Hey.”

“Practically catatonic.”

Luke opted to make a drowsy lunge at Poe, kissing the corner of his mouth in a conciliatory fashion. It was only the third or fourth time, and a happy little _zing_ went down his spine as Poe turned his head to catch Luke’s mouth properly.

“Gotta keep you awake somehow,” Poe mumbled, and turned off the screen with the remote.

Poe was a fast study in all arenas of life: after this, he quickly learned to skip the film and go straight for the kissing.

.

The red couch, the day’s last rays, Poe’s warm insistent mouth against his, and the touch of Poe’s hands: the sensory themes of that April. All of Luke’s memories have been like that, as long as he can remember; less clear, linear progressions of events than flashes of feeling, sensation, textured snapshots in time and space.

Poe made it clear that for the time being he would prefer not to be touched below the waist – but where Luke was concerned, he had no such reservations.  At first Luke was a little distressed by the gross imbalance of it, at being unable to reciprocate in kind - no matter how good (so good) it was to be touched again, and by someone whose enthusiasm was certainly matched by skill.

And yet, the first time that Poe brought him to the brink with his hand, pressed him insistently back against the couch cushions, and tipped him pell-mell over the edge with that mouth – he had looked up at Luke through his lashes with an expression like nothing so much as the cat who’d gotten the cream. It should have been impossible for a man in a wheelchair to _swagger,_ but the jaunty set of Poe’s shoulders as he moved around the apartment, afterwards, was unmistakably that – and Luke considered that maybe, after all, Poe was getting back some of what as he was giving.

And it wasn't _completely_ true that Luke wasn’t able to reciprocate in kind, even while keeping his hands virtuously above Poe’s waist. He was learning the sweet notes that he could play on Poe’s upper body – the flush and shudder when his finger brushed the whorls of Poe’s ear, the sudden tightening of Poe’s hands on Luke’s arms as he dipped his mouth to Poe’s clavicle. On another occasion, when Poe had guided Luke’s hands under his shirt, there was another, pleasing reaction as Luke slid his palms up over Poe’s sides, over his bottom ribs. 

 "That– do that again," Poe had managed, looking almost surprised at his own throaty moan, and Luke had been only too happy to oblige.

.

Luke knew that it wasn’t uncommon for new erogenous zones to develop after spinal injury: the brain reassigning parts of the body with novel and surprising responsibilities, neural pathways rerouting and rewiring. The body is infinitely creative in the search for pleasure, in adapting to new circumstances, even as the conscious mind still grapples with its new reality.

Where Luke’s own medical background failed him, Wedge Antilles, M.D, was his usual go-to. In typically Wedge-ish fashion, he didn’t question Luke’s sudden interest in sexual functioning post-spinal trauma until Luke had asked about five increasingly specific questions on three separate coffee breaks.

“Well, for an incomplete t-ten case, erections are probable, but the orgasm – _if_ he’s one of the forty-five percent or so that can have one at all – will, of course, be dry. No ejaculation reflex. Most of our male patients find this upsetting, but if fertility is the issue, in-vitro methods are always on the table.”  Wedge paused in the midst of ladling an obscene quantity of sugar into his coffee, and looked at Luke inquiringly.  “Is this for the practitioner’s degree that you’re leaving my ward to go to ruin for? I thought you were specializing in community family practice, not rehab nursing.”

Luke, who had known Wedge since they were both sixteen, had cause to reflect that it was a mark of how far Wedge had come in his people skills over the years that he had even thought to ask.  “No, it isn’t _–_ and I have every confidence that Rey will stave off ruin far better than I ever have.”

He didn’t say that Rey was one of the few of Luke’s nursing students over the years whom Luke would trust to manage Wedge, when Luke moved on. Wedge was a brilliant doctor, and had become much, much better with patients and their families over the years, but still sometimes needed a firm cue to leave a bedside when he had overstayed his welcome, and Rey wasn’t afraid to provide one.

But because Luke _had_ known him since they were sixteen, and they had been lovers at college, and had even recovered from that experience enough to be good friends to one another over the years, he did admit: “I’m seeing someone, actually.”

“An incomplete t-ten?” Wedge’s frown deepened for a moment, then cleared. “Fertility not a concern, then. Is he one of the forty-five percent?”

.

Luke found out a few evenings later.

He had brought an aloe plant for Poe’s apartment, reasoning that it would be hard to kill, and Poe had proclaimed it the most wildly romantic cactus he had ever received.

“It’s a succulent, actually,” Luke clarified, watching with quiet delight as Poe explored the plant with his hands, testing the spikes with his fingertips.

“Okay, that sounds...vaguely obscene,” Poe said. “It’s the most wildly romantic succulent I’ve ever received, then.”

He had put the plant on the counter in pride of place, before turning his chair back towards Luke with a gleam in his eye that was becoming familiar.

As he was pressed into the red couch and rendered first pantless, then incoherent, Luke was amazed that he had ever doubted whether Poe enjoyed taking him apart like this. When he regained the power of speech (but not his pants), he remembered Wedge’s question.

“Yeah, I’m one of the lucky ones,” Poe said lightly; although the set of his mouth on the word _lucky_ was sour, and Luke wondered how many well-meaning people, in the past year, had told Poe that he was lucky: that his injury could have been worse, that he should be thankful that it hadn’t been higher, or the nerves more completely severed.

Poe’s head was pillowed on Luke’s leg, at that point, and Luke absently played with Poe’s curls as he continued, “I can still have an orgasm, even if I can’t physically _come_. That plumbing’s out of commission, I guess. But honestly, it’s...more trouble than it’s worth.”

“Why’s that?”

Poe made a face. “Ah, it’s just harder to get there. I’ve managed it a handful of times in as many months, but it takes fucking _forever_ , and it’s....different. Half the battle is just getting myself in the mood, and I’m not, uh, all that patient.”

Luke wound a dark strand around a finger, mouth quirking as he tugged it slightly. “I’ve noticed.” 

Poe lifted his shoulders slightly, reached down to yank a cushion out from under his hips and pull his own heels in closer. His right leg appeared to resist the flex, arrested stubbornly at ninety degrees; a fine tremor ran through his bare foot as they watched, and then again, Poe grimacing as the spasm ran its course. Overactive muscle tone was the price that Poe paid for retaining some degree of movement in his legs _–_ sometimes the spasticity rendered them stiff and resistant; sometimes they moved of their own accord.

“Sorry. Mind of its own.” Poe glared at his leg as if to say _You done now_? before tugging the knee towards him again – gentler, this time – and settling back into Luke.

“Don’t be. So...you said it was different. Bad-different?” Luke wanted to know, but Poe turned his head to nip at Luke’s wrist, evasive, just below the inked tendrils of the vine that wound around the anchor on his old Navy tattoo. Poe seemed to take special delight in worrying the fading design with his mouth, tracing and tickling it with his fingers.

“Different-different,” Poe said firmly. “Besides, getting you off is _way_ more fun.”

.

A warm May evening, bonfire smoke in the air, the black lab loping at their side after out-running and out-playing all comers at the off-leash park near Poe’s apartment. It had been Poe’s last day of a year-long stint in outpatient physical therapy, and his mood was buoyant, and catching.

The ground a block away from the apartment sloped gently downwards – Luke knew this because of the fair bit of speed Poe was able to put on when, after glancing around the deserted street, he pulled Luke into his lap and tore off down the sidewalk, BB in tongue-lolling pursuit.

Momentum carried them, laughing, almost to Poe’s front door, and when Luke regretfully prepared to wriggle free and recollect his dignity, Poe snaked an arm around to tug him back down.

“No, no, door-to-couch service, you stay there–”

(They had tried, once, going back to Luke’s place, but the carpeting in his bungalow was a pain, the hallway too narrow, the bathroom too tight – hardly the stuff of accessibility.)

Somehow they managed to get through the main doors, down the hall and into Poe’s entranceway with Luke still in Poe’s lap, BB surging past them in a single-minded quest for her water bowl. Luke twisted around to say something smart, lost the opportunity as Poe kissed him, then forgot it completely as Poe slipped a hand under his shirt, the other palming the front of his jeans.

“The hell you’re leaving before I collect my fare,” Poe growled into his ear, and Luke submitted with an appreciative shudder, arching into Poe’s hand.

Luke was aware of Poe’s own hardness against him, an intermittent stirring as Luke resettled himself in Poe’s lap to straddle him properly. A spinal reflex arc, less the product of any mental arousal than simple friction – but looking at Poe’s heavy-lidded gaze, Luke was gratifyingly sure that the arousal was there too.

 "Stay tonight?" Poe spoke the question against Luke’s throat, unexpectedly.   

It was the first time the invitation had been extended, and Luke sighed a little as he leaned back, running through a mental checklist _-– cat: not fed, day off: not until Friday–_

 "Believe me, I’d love to, but no can do." He gave Poe’s hair a regretful tug.

"But you've got an hour, right?" Poe was making distracting circles with finger and thumb on Luke’s inseam.

"That, I can do.”

And then Poe was pulling back. “Okay, wait, I want to…to get out of these,” he said, plucking at the fabric of his pants.

Luke had seen Poe shirtless only once, golden in the evening light, but never more than that – had never so much as seen Poe wear shorts, even with spring temperatures gradually rising into the eighties.

“I’d better get up, then.”

When he climbed off, though, probably looking like what his Aunt Beru would have termed a hot mess ( _“and not in a good way_ ”), Poe’s resolve was visibly wavering, the muscles of his jaw working.

“I won’t watch, if you like,” Luke said quickly, trying not to betray his hope in his voice.

“Yeah…I’m gonna…in the bedroom. Sorry.” Poe ran a hand through his hair, blowing out a frustrated breath. “Nothing feels like it can be spontaneous anymore, you know?”

“This feels plenty spontaneous to me.” Luke hesitated. “Do I get to come in, after?”

“Only if you give my ride a five-star Yelp review while I manhandle my goddamn pants off. Um…Is it...” Poe seemed to swallow, make a decision. “Is it okay if I leave the light off?”

Luke’s heart sank a little as Poe continued, “It’s weird for me, looking at my own legs. They’re…well. It’s like pre-serum Steve Rogers down there.”

“I’ve seen muscle atrophy before, Poe,” Luke said quietly. “It doesn’t bother me.”

“I know you have,” Poe muttered, turning his chair towards the bedroom door. “It bothers _me_.”

.

It wasn’t working. Luke knew this, even though he couldn’t see Poe’s face.

With other partners, including his ex-husband, Luke had actually preferred the dark; loved to lose himself in it, concentrating on just feeling. Had always found it overwhelming when Biggs insisted on turning on the light beside their bed, Luke pinned beneath his searching gaze like a butterfly, every nerve ending in overload ( _“look at me, Luke, let me see you, come on – that’s it – perfect –  when you look at me you’re perfect –_ ”)

Now, with Poe biting off curses softly beside him, the dark felt anything but liberating. Luke would have given anything to see Poe’s expression – maybe it would help him to know what to do, how to make it better.

With every murmured suggestion Luke made, Poe seemed to wind himself tighter. The relaxed confidence from the hall had evaporated – now, the line of Poe’s body against his was stiff, his breathing agitated. His hand on Luke’s cock was almost too rough, the rhythm unsteady, although Luke’s body responded to this treatment readily enough.

Poe, too, was hard under Luke’s hand, but he plainly couldn’t feel it.

“Shit,” Poe swore again. “Am I –“

 “Yes,” Luke reassured him for the third time, kissing his tense shoulder. “Very much so. You’re doing so, so well, just….try to relax. Here, what if I – ”

Thinking of that spot on Poe’s ribs that had drawn shudders from him, that time on the sofa, Luke moved his hand upwards, words of encouragement on his lips.

“No– ”

Poe jerked as he registered the touch at his middle, pushed Luke’s hand downwards again. “Sorry, just– please, can we keep trying, I thought I felt something there– ”

“Alright – alright – here.” Finding Poe’s length again, already softening in the absence of direct contact, Luke squeezed coaxingly. “You’re here, I’ve got you,” he murmured. “You’re doing beautifully.”

Poe’s short laugh was a little ugly. “Poor choice of words, Luke.”

(This was puzzling to Luke; he only realized after, with a sickening jolt, that Poe must have remembered him saying something very similar on the acute care ward, months ago, under very different circumstances.)

It wasn’t long before Poe ran out of patience, pushing himself up abruptly. “Fuck it,” he snapped. “We could be here till kingdom _-fucking_ -come.”

Feeling helpless, Luke could barely make out the tense, unhappy line of Poe’s shoulders, a dark line against the gloom of the room. Luke himself was still painfully hard.

“Was that meant to be a really bad pun?” Luke tried, keeping his voice light, but Poe was moving again, a rustle of fabric and more swearing as he fought with the bed clothes that were tangled around their legs. Luke moved to help him.

“No,” Poe said, forcefully; then, in a more conversational tone: “No, I've got it. Hey, do you know how weird it is not to know where your own fucking leg is?”

And then, while Luke was trying to figure out how to respond to that, he felt the brush of Poe’s chest against him, the warmth of his breath, as Poe pulled his body up and over Luke’s, loosely pinning his wrists with his hands.

“Hello,” Luke breathed, unsure of what came next. He couldn’t see Poe's face, and didn’t know what to do with the falsely cheery note in Poe’s voice, and _he still couldn’t see his face_ –

“Can’t leave a job half-finished, can I?” Poe said. His stomach grazing against Luke’s erection was enough to make him curl his toes in the sheets. “At least one of us can get off tonight.”

Luke tried not to squirm too obviously against him. “You don’t have to–”

Poe grazed his teeth against his collarbone. “I _want_ to, though." There was something brittle there, under the note of petulance. Another nip, this time soothed away by a tongue: “Let me do this much. Luke. Please?”

When Luke freed a hand to reach for him, reassure him, anything, Poe pushed it away, firmly. The message was clear: _Stay. Don’t touch._

Poe waited, frustration and distress radiating off of him, and Luke closed his eyes. He couldn’t see anything important, anyway. “Okay,” He said, kissing Poe’s hair. “Okay.”

Then Poe’s warm weight was gone, the mattress shifting while he changed positions, transferring his weight. When the warmth returned, it took the form of Poe’s lips and tongue, burning a trail down Luke’s belly, and when Poe took Luke in his mouth, he couldn’t help it –  bucked his hips up into that heat with a needy groan.

Clinically speaking, it was one of the best blowjobs he’d ever had in his life. At the last Luke reached down blindly, seeking purchase in Poe’s soft curls to anchor him through the aftershocks, but brushed Poe's cheek instead.

It was wet with tears.

Luke froze, appalled, as Poe pulled off and cleared his throat.

“So. The pants come off,” Poe’s voice came out of the blackness, heavy with sarcasm. “Not exactly a barn-burning success, but hey, thanks for coming out, folks.”

It was very possibly one of the most insensitive things that Luke had ever heard in bed (and he’d dated Wedge Antilles, so that was saying something) and he briefly considered being speechless with offense, indignation and hurt battling with the need to give in to the endorphin-laced langor flooding his body.

"That was... unkind," he said finally, not trusting himself to say more.

"I– I'm sorry,” Poe said, sounding startled. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean– I meant me,” and the note of defeat there was enough to take some of the sting out of Luke's own wounded pride.

Luke heard, rather than saw, as Poe levered himself up and rolled, felt the mattress depress as Poe wriggled onto his side beside him, but not touching him. A grunt, as he reached down to pull his legs after him. A sigh, soft in the still room, as he gathered himself into an alignment less like that of a broken doll.

Luke lay still, half-senseless from orgasm, and unsure for the life of him what to do.

“You probably need to get going,” Poe said, quietly. It could have been a stinging dismissal, but there was something plaintive in the observation.

Luke did. But there was no universe – none – in which Luke could leave things like this, and he groped and found Poe’s hand in the dark, brought it to his lips. “I’ll be back in an hour,” he said hoarsely. “Keep the bed warm for me.”

 .

When he pressed the button for Poe’s suite, there was a long silence – time enough for misgivings, for Luke to wonder whether Poe would even let him back in or retreat into a sulk, leaving him standing uselessly in the atrium with a hastily-packed overnight bag on his shoulder. Which would _really_ cap the evening off.

_“Hey._ ” The speaker crackled, and the door clicked open.

He found the door unlocked. BB had come to investigate when Luke entered, snuffling at his helmet and bag when he set them down, but then she headed back down the short hall, nails clicking on the hardwood – not to the open door of the bedroom, but into the living room.

He followed her to find Poe sitting on the red couch, still bare-chested but wearing thin cotton pajama pants. BB’s head was on his knee, a picture of canine bliss as Poe worried one silky ear.

“Kettle’s boiled,” Poe offered quietly, before Luke could say anything. “There’s some tea in the cupboard.” The words were abrupt, but the tone was soft, conciliatory.

The living room and the kitchen were one continuous space, partially sectioned off by the counter that housed the cupboard in question – BB-proofed, like all the others, with a child safety lock. Inspecting its contents, Luke picked up a package from next to the bottle of instant coffee that Poe inexplicably favoured in the evenings; an Air Force thing, he assumed.

“Have you taken up drinking green tea?” he said doubtfully.

“God, no, that’s all yours. I bought it the other day. I think it’s the kind you drink– the tea aisle is kind of excessive.”

“Thanks for braving it, then.” As Luke straightened up again, he noticed for the first time that a small jade plant had joined the aloe on the counter. When he looked up, he saw that Poe was looking at him over the side of the couch, a lopsided smile on his face.

“I’m calling them Goose and Maverick. And that’s some bangin’ helmet hair, there, Naberrie.”

Luke rolled his eyes and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Showering and then immediately stuffing one’s head back into a motorcycle helmet did not a Stylish Coif make. But the dread that had been coiled in his stomach was unknotting as he poured a steaming mug and made his way back toward the red island in the living room, setting his drink next to Poe’s on the low side table.

His tea was in the cupboard. Poe was teasing him about his hair. They could get through this.

Poe made a small, hesitant movement towards him when he sat down, and Luke was quick to close the distance and wrap his arms around him. Poe leaned into the embrace gratefully, burying his face into the join of Luke’s neck and shoulder.

BB whined, bereft, and Luke tapped the couch. "Well, go on– _up_. But don't get used to it," he warned, scratching her ears briefly.

Poe had apparently showered, too; his curls were damp against Luke's cheek.

“So who talks first?” he said after a while, voice muffled in Luke’s hoodie. “You talk first? I talk first? Or– how about people who aren't complete assholes go first. That leaves me out."

Luke tugged Poe's hair reprovingly. "I’d like to hear what’s going on with you, actually. And I don't think you're a complete asshole. As a general rule, I don't date those. Anymore."

"Oh, yeah?" Poe considered this. Then, "What about incomplete t-ten assholes?"

"You're hilarious," Luke told him, and Poe resettled himself more comfortably against Luke’s side, reaching out to touch BB’s sable coat.

"I thought–” Poe swallowed. “I thought keeping the lights out would be best. You know, to help with the self-consciousness, but...shit, that was..."

"Difficult," suggested Luke, thinking of the agony of trying to guess what was written on Poe's face, closed off to him in the dark.

In front of him now, Poe's face twisted wryly. "I was gonna say _awful_ , but difficult works. I couldn't relax to save my life. It's weird, you know, I think it was partly because I couldn't see– "

"–no, no, I agree, I would have given anything to see–

" –my dick," Poe said mournfully, at the same time that Luke said, "Your face."

There was a short, silent beat. Poe's mouth was hanging open slightly, a mortified flush coming over his face, as Luke began to laugh – helplessly and uncontrollably. Soon Poe was giggling through his wretchedness, and BB was wriggling over them both, trying to stem the guffaws by solicitous face-licking.

“Okay, okay– ” Poe gasped, pushing her off. “So your answer was better. That’s what I should have said. Much more romantic. Can I– can I have a do-over?"

“Too late,” Luke said, breathless. “Romance is dead and buried now. You killed it.”

“With my dick," agreed Poe, setting off a fresh round of sniggers.

BB, still trying desperately to encourage her human to breathe properly, made a last ditch effort and deposited her favourite squeaky toys in Poe's lap in succession.

"Haaah. Uh. God. Okay," Luke wiped his eyes, his face aching a little. “But seriously, what you said– it, uh, it does make sense."

"It does?"

"I think so, anyway. We tend to be pretty visual on the whole. Men, I mean. More than women," Luke added in response to Poe's expression. "Ask any women’s health magazine.”

“A lot of those lying around the break room, huh?”

Luke shrugged, grinning. “Laugh if you like, there’s a lot of good slow-cooker recipes in those things."

The air between them was lighter, no longer a maze of raw nerves and invisible pitfalls. Poe still looked sheepish, but his hand was in Luke's, and Luke squeezed it reassuringly.

"I was going to ask– you can’t... feel when you’re hard, can you?”

Poe looked away. “No.”

“Okay, so that’s a double disadvantage there, isn’t it?" Luke thoughtfully tapped his thumb against the back of Poe's hand. "You couldn’t see it and you couldn’t feel it – and it’s easier to feel turned on when you can see and feel your body responding. You didn’t have any of that to go on, just my say-so.”

“Oh,” Poe sounded relieved. “Okay, I’m glad it’s not just… a symptom of incurable narcissism. You know, to go with the incomplete t-ten asshole problem.”

"No, I don't think that either. But... we agree that the dark isn’t…the best.”

“Copy that," Poe said readily.

"That's a start, then." Now that the adrenaline of distress had dissipated and the world was starting to right itself, Luke was aware of how tired he was; he wondered if he could suggest a move back to the bedroom before he fell asleep on Poe's shoulder.

“You know what the obvious solution is, of course,” Poe said seriously, into the silence.

"Candles?"

“No, I wear night vision goggles,” Poe deadpanned, and Luke subsided into exhausted laughter again.

“No – you’re right." Poe said, earnest now. "Candles might be better. Or I just get over myself and leave the lights on. I just…I need to get used to the idea of you seeing the whole disaster." Poe cut Luke off at his intake of breath, continued "I know you said it doesn't bother you, but...it's been a year, and I still sometimes can't believe that those are my legs. It's not just how they look, it's how they feel. Or...you know, _don’t_."

“Is that why you’ve never asked me to come watch your rowing practices?” Luke asked, realization dawning.

Poe looked rueful. “That – and the fact that no one remotely serious about dating a person should make them watch rowing practice. That’s just cruel.” A crooked grin crossed his face briefly. "Plus, then I'd have to introduce you to Orson and I don't want to sic him on you just yet."

Luke was too tired to ask just what was so bad about Orson Krennic, whom Poe seemed to consider both a close friend and mentor; or to wonder about when Poe _would_ judge it the right time for them to start introducing one another to their friends and families. The ‘remotely serious about dating’ part wasn’t lost on him, though, and he happily tucked the words away for later.

“We should go to bed,” he said gently, and Poe murmured assent. “I...do have questions, for another time. About the feeling in your legs, for one."

Poe was silent for a moment.

 “You’re not asking as a nurse, are you?” he said at last, twisting to look at Luke.

Luke tried to think carefully how to answer this, and answered simply.  "I'm asking as someone who very much wants to make love to you, Poe. And I want to know how."

“Well,” Poe cleared his throat. His eyes were a little overbright. “Well, that’s all right, I guess. Can we…can we do the questions by email? I think I might do better in writing.”

“All right." Luke yawned. "Tomorrow."

The bedroom still held a note of challenge, a whiff of wounded pride and bruised feelings hanging over the rumpled bedclothes, and Luke could see Poe’s jaw tightening a little as he tugged the sheets back in order and redistributed pillows over the scene of his defeat. So be it, thought Luke, falling into them gratefully; Rome wasn’t built in a day, as Owen was fond of saying.

Before he dropped off the ocean shelf of consciousness, he brushed Poe’s hand where it lay on top of the blanket, and got a squeeze in return.

.

The emails were one of Luke's quirks, which Rey assured him was all good and well for work, but aged him hopelessly in all other circles of life. Poe was mostly amused and tolerant.

"Don't get me wrong, I kind of like playing Tom Hanks to your Meg Ryan, but you could always phone me, you know," Poe had pointed out. "And you don't _always_ have to have a subject line." (Luke always did; whatever came into his head at the time.)

"I like email," Luke had insisted, feeling a little sheepish. "It's like getting letters. And why am _I_ Meg Ryan, here?"

His and Poe's email correspondence was fairly lengthy already, continuations of conversations begun during dates, inquiries as to how the other's week was going. Luke nearly always initiated these, typing on his old Dell in the cool of the evening, but Poe was usually quick to respond.

On this occasion, Luke wrote from his phone, from the hospital:

. . . _I was thinking about what you said last night, about it being weird not to know where your own leg was. If you can't see it, are you able to tell where your leg is in space? And is it weird for just one of them, or both?_

Luke had been in ortho/neuro long enough to have a fairly good idea of the multitude of ways that sensation could be disordered by traumatic spinal injury, when it wasn’t lost altogether; but he was curious to know how much Poe knew about his own injury. Whether the doctors and nurses that came after him had done their jobs.

His phone buzzed.

**_Proprioception in the right leg is fucked (yes, I had to look up how to spell it – don’t ask me to say it). Logically I know it’s attached to me but if I'm not looking at it, it could be off doing a Bollywood dance number for all I know._ **

Sandwich momentarily abandoned, Luke settled in to type back:

_What about the other sensations – heat?? Pressure? Pain? Same for both legs?_

There was a five minute lag before his phone buzzed again.

**_Okay – and I hope you’re writing this down because there’ll be a quiz after…_ **

**_Left leg – no pain, no temp. Last week I spilled hot coffee on that thigh and only noticed it when I did a skin check (I know, not cool– no lasting damage though, promise!) If I press on the skin or squeeze, I can feel that pressure, but that’s it. On the plus side, at least I know where that leg is, and I have a lot more movement in that one._ **

**_Right leg – like I said, no idea where the damn thing is if I'm not keeping an eye on it, and I can’t make it do what I want it to do a lot of the time. But if I spilled coffee on it, I’d know it. And I can’t feel hard pressure like with the left leg but – and this is weird – I can feel my clothing on my skin when I put pants on. Or BB’s fur. Light touches and brushes. Not sure what to make of that._ **

Luke wrote back; _Makes sense. There's different receptors for deep pressure like squeezing and light touch like the clothes._

**_I have a feeling that next you’re going to ask about El Romance Killer._ **

_Are we really calling it that?_

**_"Killer" for short_ **

_Sigh. So what can you feel there?_

A longer pause, then:

**_I can’t feel a squeeze or rubbing or anything. My body still reacts to those things pretty reliably, though. (Unless you were just saying that the other night to salvage my pride)_ **

_It definitely does, and I definitely wasn’t :)_

**_Heh. Wait til your supervisor finds out that you’re sexting at work._ **

_I_ am _the supervisor, and I’m on lunch. Besides, this is technically email.  
_

**_Sure. Go on, what are you wearing._ **

_Scrubs?_

**_Wow, you're no fun._ **

_Back to your dick though..._

**_You know, normally that’s a sentence I would have been overjoyed to read. Also – have you considered maybe that in this case, you could text instead of sending 500 emails??_ **

_Sorry! It’s harder to go back and refer to texts, though._

**_Jesus. You really ARE taking notes._ **

_:) What about the other sensations – light brushes? Temperature?_

**_Only in some places, but...some? Kind of patchy. Light touch comes through best. Around the head and on one side._ **

_Which side **?** _

**_Left. By the way, I hope you're imagining what I'm doing right now and blushing._ **

Well, Luke certainly was now (and after over twenty years of nursing he had thought he was impervious to blushing), but he pressed on.

_And hot coffee?_

**_Yes, if you spilled coffee on my junk, you would probably see a grown man cry. You're not into wax play, are you?_ **

_???_

**_Nvm_ **

_Should I google?_

**_Absolutely NOT while at work._ **

The email conversation grew steadily throughout the week, Luke asking questions as they occurred to him, Poe answering gamely. It was a curious mixture of blunt honesty, flirtation and banter, but it was a mode that felt familiar for them, already.

**_I’ve got to say_ ,** Poe wrote on Thursday, **_This hasn't been anything like the usual crap in those couples’ quizzes– about whether you’re the big or little spoon, or what side of the bed you like and what that says about you. Instead it's fun questions like, "which leg is most likely to spasm at an awkward time?"_**

**_Are you free on Saturday, by the way, or will you be busy compiling all your notes?_ **

_Couples' quizzes? Now who’s reading women’s health magazines?  And I’m having dinner at my sister’s Saturday night, but can I tempt you to the downtown farmer’s market in the morning, instead?_

**_A matinee date? Sure, I’m game. I’ll bring bread, we can feed hipsters._ **

_Pcdfbob;;;\s[[FSS   ojoe      .,,,,,,,z_

**_????_ **

_Sorry cat on keyboard_

**_Thank god, I thought one of us was having a stroke._ **

.

Saturday promised to be ninety-five in the shade, so they met early enough at the market to beat the day’s heat and the midmorning circus. They devoured warm breakfast sandwiches and fragrant coffee at a picnic table, all the while serenaded by Mos Eisley’s rogue bassoonist.

“That’s Dan,” Luke explained, at Poe’s incredulous look. “He’s a regular on Cantina Street.”

“I haven't recognized anything he’s played so far,” said Poe. “What’s up with the Halloween mask?”

“No one really knows. He’s kind of a city fixture, though. Legend has it that one day, he’ll actually play something that someone requests.”

“And then they’ll crown that guy the one true king of Mos Eisley, right?”

As they wandered the stalls, borne along in the gentle flow of the early-morning crowd, Luke suspected that this was as reassuring for Poe as it was for himself: to be just another couple in the crowd, enjoying one another’s company, away from Poe’s apartment and the silent accusation of the bedroom door. Poe sometimes touched the small of Luke’s back to draw his attention here or there, and he leaned into the contact with relief. Part of Luke – the part that had always been drawn to affectionate, casual touch, like a sun-loving plant growing eastward – had been afraid that Poe’s easy physicality might have changed.

Luke was eyeing some tumbler tomatoes and about to regretfully tell the vendor that he’d have to come back the next market day with something to bring them home in, but Poe nudged him in the side, saying “Hey, car, remember? I'll drive you back. Go nuts.”

Poe drifted further down the stalls while Luke mulled over his selection, so that he was out of earshot when the vendor said to Luke, unexpectedly:

“Hey, dumb question, maybe, but your friend– he drives?”

Luke looked up from comparing the number of flowers on two specimens of “Garden Pearl”  –not a tomato variety he’d grown before. “He does,” he affirmed, neutrally.

The man sounded genuinely curious more than anything else. “How does that work– how’s he brake?”

“Pretty well, actually. Hand controls beside the steering wheel,” Luke explained. “I’ll take these two, please.”

“My dad had a stroke,” the man continued as he accepted the bills. “Been in a chair five years now. Driving his cars is the thing he misses most, I think. Your friend looks a tad young for a stroke though – football accident? I was just thinking he kinda looks familiar, like I seen him on the news before.”

Poe’s crash _had_ made the news, in fact; had been witnessed personally by tens of thousands of horrified spectators at the Mos Eisley International Air Tattoo the previous spring, the footage repeating through news outlets, superimposed with a photo of Poe looking smart in uniform. But Luke wasn’t about to mention that.

Fortunately, other market-goers were commanding the man’s attention, so Luke hefted his bounty and went to find Poe. He found him sampling what looked like salsas, and Luke slowed as he approached, unexpectedly arrested by the tableau, and by unbidden memory.

The first time that Luke had seen Poe outside of the acute ward, Poe had been looking a touch scruffy in sweatpants, hair growing out from military regulation. He had been feeding coins into the coffee machine on the second, quieter floor of the Mos Eisley West cafeteria, still awkward in the new wheels. In fact, he had backed the chair into Luke’s table, where Luke had been cramming in some study for his Advanced Health Assessment course before going on evening shift.

Months later, on the second date, Poe had told him about the goals that he and Mace, his Occupational Therapist, had set to gradually desensitize Poe to the self-consciousness of the wheelchair. His mission objective that day had been simply to buy coffee in the cafeteria, but rather than face the scrutiny of a live cashier, Poe had opted instead for the awful machine-dispensed coffee.

“I was trying to avoid human interaction at all costs,” Poe had confessed. “The only people I was really talking to were therapists – who were great, don’t get me wrong – but I _had_ to talk to them. And Huo, I guess, because there was no keeping him away, once he had decided I was going to stay with him and Gita until my place was set up.” Poe’s face when he mentioned his older cousin was fond, belying the words. “And then I ended up talking to you, that day, and it felt...weirdly not awful? Or...normal. It felt normal.”

“That’s good,” Luke had said solemnly. “I try hard to be not-awful, in between the spinal taps.”

Now, as Poe maneuvered out of the path of a stroller without interrupting his conversation with the vendor, he looked anything but scruffy; he looked cool and comfortable in his light slacks and white shirt. More than that, though, he was wearing what must have been his old self-possession about him. There were still moments when Luke had seen that assurance slip; when a child stared too long, or when Poe encountered an obstacle in his chair’s path that would once have been negotiated without thinking – or in the face of harmless curiosity from people like the tomato vendor  – but he was wearing it now,and he was breathtakingly, utterly, unfairly beautiful.

Poe saw Luke, pivoted and _brightened,_ somehow, as if a sun could brighten, and held something out to him on a tortilla chip.

“Here, try this,” he said, eager. And then: “Oh _shit_ , I’m sorry– I thought that was the mild one!”

"What _is_ that?" Luke gasped, through streaming eyes.

"Ghost pepper," Poe said, contrite.

.

Poe had rowing late that morning, and asked Luke if he didn’t mind if they stopped at his apartment before dropping Luke and his plants at his own house. “Just so I can get my gear on and be ready to go; the boathouse is closer to your place than to mine," he explained, and there was a strange, almost nervous edge to his voice.

Luke knew perfectly well that the club wasn’t any closer to his places than Poe's, but didn’t say so. He waited in the apartment entranceway, saying hello to BB, as Poe went to the bedroom to change.

Luke guessed that Poe used the bed as a platform for dressing – Luke had seen patients being taught the technique at the hospital. He knew it was an awkward process of levering one’s own unresponsive weight and that Poe wouldn’t thank him for imagining it.

“Right, good to go.” Poe’s voice had a touch of false bravado to it as he wheeled out of the bedroom door and down the hall, wearing an athletic top– and shorts.

Luke's first thought was that his prediction had been correct: as far as atrophy went, he had seen far, far worse. Poe still had some movement in his legs and was weight-bearing daily; Luke knew that he walked with braces at the gym several days a week. There was still a marked difference in muscle mass from his upper body, certainly, but his legs were nothing like the sticklike limbs Luke had seen in some lifelong paraplegics.

It wasn’t horrifying, it was just _Poe_ , brown from the sun, moving easily in the chair that was as much a part of him now as his legs.

Luke could have said all of this, but wasn’t even slightly tempted to do so.  He wouldn’t have diminished the gesture for the world, the move forward that Poe had just taken for them both; towards _what_ , Luke didn’t entirely know. He just knew that it was the polar opposite of reaching out in the dark to find tears on Poe’s face.

He wasn’t sure he knew the right words to convey any of this, so he bent down to kiss Poe instead – awkwardly but with feeling –  before they left the apartment.

“Tingly,” Poe commented, smiling a little as he broke the kiss.

“You poisoned me with ghost pepper salsa, remember?”

“Yeah, but then I bought you ice cream,” Poe countered.

“Yes, but only after you stopped to request that Dan play _Ring of Fire_ in my honour, _while my mouth was still burning_.”

“Well, he actually played it, so where’s my crown and sceptre?”

Impatient with this display, BB inserted herself between them and deposited her leash in Poe’s lap with a heartfelt whine. Poe chuckled. “Ready for a swim, girl? Ready to go irritate that German Shepherd?” To Luke, he explained, “Orson has this massive assistance dog, Tarkin. He _hates_ getting wet and BB always shakes all over him.”

Once BB had scrambled onto the towel-covered back seat, Poe made the transfer from chair to driver’s seat and had his wheelchair disassembled and stowed in under a minute, movements swift and efficient.

As he slid into the passenger seat, Luke reflected that, aesthetically speaking, the scarring on Poe's right thigh might be more shocking to the average person. To Luke’s trained eye, the leg had healed wonderfully. He was vaguely surprised at the clarity of the memory, rising again unbidden, of ruined flesh, pinioned in place by fixator pins like so much raw meat. Or perhaps it wasn’t Poe’s injury he was remembering, but another like his – Luke had seen so many.

A few dimpled scars from the pins were still visible below the cuff of Poe's shorts, and the ridge of the curving incision above the knee.

“I talked to him about it,” Poe admitted as he backed out of the space, turning on the AC full-blast. “Orson, I mean. About not wanting you to see my legs. He said – how did he put it –" He screwed up his face, approximating an Australian accent quite badly. “ ‘Mate, if someone who looks like you doesn’t have the stones to wear boardies in front of his date, the rest of us might as well fuck off and die alone.' " At Luke’s expression, Poe added, “I was kinda touched, actually. I think that's the closest he gets to a compliment.”

“Well… remind me to thank him, if I ever meet him,” Luke said. “What are boardies?”

“These, I guess.” Poe indicated the fabric of his shorts. Black and yellow were apparently the rowing club’s colours.

Luke couldn’t resist reaching across to touch the incision scar on Poe’s leg where it extended beyond the cuff of the material.

“Speaking as a medical professional,” he said. “I have to say, this looks _great_.”

“Thanks,” Poe said, rolling his eyes, but smiling. “It’s a custom job.”

.

The following Sunday, Luke started a month of evenings on the ward. It was his least favourite shift, and he said as much to Poe in his email that night during his break.

_Funny, all my favourite nurses were on that shift,_ Poe wrote back. _Why don’t you come over in the morning on Tuesday? I can make us brunch. Probably. I've just about mastered pancakes._

Poe’s schedule would be more flexible than Luke’s for only another few months. After that, his graduate studies in Aeronautical Engineering at MEU would begin. Textbooks were already piled on his desk in the apartment: propulsion, avionics, applied hydro and aerodynamics.

Poe’s master's degree was being sponsored by no less than Imperial Designs, which would be waiting to snap him up when he finished. Their main office and largest laboratory facilities were in Mos Eisley; apparently, his friend Orson’s partner was some sort of big designer there.

Poe had applied to the program in his seventh month of outpatient therapy, in the same week that his physical therapist had sat him down and gently told him that his gait training was unlikely to progress any further; that beyond laboured steps in full-leg braces for exercise purposes, walking would never be a functional mode of transport for Poe again.

“That was a Monday. I went to a bar with Orson that night. Got shitfaced,” Poe later told Luke. “Or _I_ did, anyway, the guy doesn’t drink anymore, and he hauled me home. Didn’t do anything the next day except get shitfaced again. Sick as a dog all day Wednesday– the less said about that, the better. On Thursday I started the application process, and on Friday I told Cassian that I needed to learn to drive again, so we started working on that instead of the walking.”

“Sounds like one hell of a week,” Luke had said.

Luke was still learning the extent of the energy and drive beneath Poe’s easy manner. It seemed that when he wasn’t spending time with Luke, or with his cousin’s young family, Poe was plowing through online refresher courses in calculus and engineering statistics, and when he wasn’t studying, he was rowing, or putting himself through his gruelling paces at the gym. If anything, his activity level had increased since his physical therapy sessions had ended.

September would bring change for Luke’s own studies as well, from the online modules that he was able to complete on his own time to classes that he would need to physically attend on campus (and truth be told, he wasn’t entirely looking forward to finding out whether he was the only forty-seven year old student in the Nurse Practitioner program). He would cut down to half-day shifts at the hospital and – more significantly – relinquish the charge nurse duties that he had held for more than five years.

This was a time of transition for them both, and Luke was trying not to think too hard about whether it would all fall apart once this strange liminal zone had been crossed, and their lives settled into new courses.

On Tuesday morning, still half-asleep, he picked up the phone to Poe’s name flashing on the screen. Poe’s voice was tight with discomfort.

It was a neuropathic pain flare-up, a bad one, and Luke wasn’t all that surprised to hear it – Poe seemed determined to push his body as far as it would go under its changed circumstances, and it was protesting. Letting down its defenses.

“Do you want me to come over?” Luke asked, already knowing what the answer would be. This wasn’t something Poe would want him to see, not yet. Shorts were one thing, but this was a level of vulnerability beyond that.

"No – no, I’m sorry but…no. BB’s here, we’re just going to – ahhh – hunker down.”

There was a long silence, and Luke almost took it as his cue to hang up, when Poe blurted, “Can you…talk for a bit, though? I wouldn’t mind the distraction.”

“Sure." Luke flipped the covers off, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. "Mind if I make an omelette while we talk?”

“Go ahead. I owe you pancakes.”

“It'll be a struggle, but I can wait.”

Luke put the phone on speaker and for an hour he talked to Poe about everything and nothing in particular: Han’s latest litter, the plot of the novel he was reading at the moment, the motorcycle trip he hoped to take next spring. He could hear the waves of pain rise and ebb in Poe’s replies – sometimes strained monosyllables, sometimes relaxed and easy.

Eventually, though, there was a pause, while Luke was waiting for his mushrooms to brown, and then Poe said abruptly, “Luke…be honest. How much of a pain is it for you to wait around for me?”

“For pancakes?” Luke asked, adjusting the heat slightly. “Or sex?”

“Sex,” Poe replied, utterly ignoring the attempt at humour – which was what made Luke turn the burner down, considering his next words.

“Poe, you're probably not going to believe me, but the only thing that really bothers me is not being able to help _you_ feel any better about it.” Luke leaned on the counter, groping for the words for something that was plainly as hard for Poe to fathom right now as it was obvious to Luke himself.

There weren’t many times when he keenly felt the gap between them – in age, in career choice, in sheer accumulation of experience in life and love – but this was one of them.

Before the faintly incredulous silence on the other end could get too long, he continued, “Don’t get me wrong, I like sex as much as the next guy, and you haven’t exactly left me deprived on that front. But I guess what I want most is just...intimacy. Intimacy with someone I _–_ ” he paused, suddenly tongue-tied ( _too soon, too soon)_ “ _–_ with someone I care about. Not someone getting me off.”

A beat, then: “What would intimacy look like, for you?” It sounded as though Poe was rolling the word around in his mouth cautiously.

“Things like seeing you in the light,” Luke admitted. “All of you. Just being able to touch you and – and not worrying about whether you, or I, or neither of us gets off or not. I mean...that part is nice, but it’s not as important to me.

For a long moment there was only the hiss of the pan, and Luke wondered if he'd said something wrong.

Finally, Poe spoke. “I think I’d like that, too.”

“Yeah?” Luke relaxed against the counter in some relief.

“Well, not right this second,” Poe admitted. “I think if anyone but BB tried to touch me right now, I’d break their hand.”

Luke laughed. "Glad I'm over here, then."

"And you are...helping." It sounded like Poe was gulping through something, whether a fresh wave of pain, or emotion, Luke couldn’t tell.

Luke said softly, “I’m glad.”

.

Poe made good on his promise of pancakes that Friday evening – like Luke, Poe delighted in breakfast foods at unorthodox times. He topped his with scrambled eggs and salsa, though, which Luke declared easily made it into the top three fascinating-but-revolting things he’d seen that month.

"And coming from you, that’s saying something," Poe commented around a mouthful. “What were the other two?”  – and yes, Luke was perennially delighted that he didn’t have to censor his work stories around Poe, the least squeamish person he’d ever met.

Poe laughed at a story that would have had made Han go green and run for the hills, but Luke thought that he was quieter than usual, fidgeting and running his hand through his hair; Luke wondered whether it was pain, still, or something else on his mind. BB seemed to sense it too, or she was hopeful for leftovers, because she poked her sleek head into Poe’s lap with a _whuff_.

“It’s the last night for that movie you had wanted to see, downtown,” Poe said, rubbing BB’s ears. “Do you feel like going?”

Luke looked at Poe's tense shoulders. “Not really – do you?”

“Nah.” Poe set his plate, still containing a small pile of untouched egg and salsa on the floor for BB, who set to work on it with a will.  "I'm in more of a make-your-own-fun kind of mood tonight, I think."

“So...Scrabble?” Luke suggested innocently – because sometimes he couldn't help himself even when he knew he should – and Poe looked so disgruntled that Luke immediately put a hand on his arm apologetically, trying to squash his grin. “Sorry, sorry, what I meant to say was, I’m interested to hear your – _mm_ – proposal–” and then he couldn’t get out the rest because Poe had tugged him half out of his chair, scowling, and shut him up for a good twenty seconds.

“Are we having fun yet?” Luke said breathlessly, and was abruptly released.

Poe grimaced, but with a smile playing around the edges. “Has anyone ever told you that you can be a real shit?”

“Yes," Luke said solemnly. "My twin sister, every day of eighth grade,” and that prompted a laugh outright. He touched Poe’s hand, earnest now. “Okay, serious time. Penny for your thoughts?”

“What you said on the phone,” Poe said, his face intense when Luke searched his eyes. "About wanting to touch. Touching and...not worrying, about the other stuff. Is that – can we do that? Tonight?"

It was sooner than Luke had dared hope for, and it took him a moment to find his voice.

“I – yes! God, yes. Of course we can. I'd wondered if–”

But Poe was already nodding, looking determined. “Okay. Okay. Give me half an hour, I’m going to go take a shower. ”

Luke looked at him, slightly puzzled, and Poe explained, “Look, I just want to be relaxed. Shower’s good for that. Besides, I don’t want to have a spasm and kick you in the face. The hot water helps with that, too.”

“Well...I appreciate that.” Luke thought for a moment, then asked: “Do you have any lotion?”

Poe looked a little bemused, but intrigued. “Yeah, some unscented stuff in the bathroom. I’ll, uh…I’ll bring it with me.”

.

Poe had left the the heavy blackout blinds open this time, and the last light of early summer was bathing one bedroom wall in mote-filled light. The fan above the bed spun softly, dispersing the desert heat.

When Luke entered, shutting a forlorn BB out behind him, Poe was sitting on the edge of the bed, his chair next to him. He was naked and scrubbing at his hair with a towel, water droplets glinting on his chest and shoulders, in the dark curls at his groin, and Luke's mouth went a little dry.

Poe sighed, tossing the towel into the empty chair. “I’ve got to say, I’ve pictured this exact moment a lot over the past week. Me all wet and naked, you in your ‘I am the Stig’ shirt. Especially the part with you staring at me like I have three heads.”

“It’s the good staring, if that makes any difference," Luke offered. It sparked a smile, if a disbelieving one, and he made to sit on the bed beside Poe.

“Oh, no.” There was a gleam of mischief in Poe’s eyes as he stopped him. “I think that you’ll find that this bed is a clothing-free zone. I'm afraid you'll have to strip. Or actually, wait– "

Poe leaned forward, hooking his hands under both knees and rolling back, using the momentum to swing his legs onto the bed. Sitting up, he scooched back and arranged his legs one over the other demurely before him, before jamming a pillow behind his lower back and settling back against the wall. Luke watched the play of muscle in his arms and torso, a little mesmerized, until he realized that Poe was looking at him expectantly.

“Okay, now you can strip," Poe said, placing his arms behind his head.

Luke raised an eyebrow. “And then I’m allowed onto the bed, am I?”

“If I like what I see, I’ll wiggle my left toe,” Poe told him grandly. Luke pulled off a sock unceremoniously and chucked it at him. “Hey!”

Under threat of pillow-shaped disciplinary action, Luke finished undressing more meekly, and his second bid to join Poe on the bed was accepted. “You could have made more of a show of it,” Poe grumbled.

"You didn't wiggle your toes enough," said Luke, smiling, and reached for him. The kiss was tentative in a way that not even the first had been, and it told Luke how much of Poe’s seeming bravado was just that. Poe usually took charge, unseaming Luke’s mouth in a deliciously insistent way; now, he seemed softly hesitant, yielding instead of demanding. Luke cupped his face with both hands, feeling the slight scrape of stubble under his palms.

“Can I touch you?” Luke asked simply, framing the question with kisses to each corner of Poe’s mouth – wanting that permission, wanting to give Poe back some sense of control.  

In answer, Poe broke away and twisted to picked up a bottle of lotion from the bedside table. He handed it to Luke. "Drugstore brand, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll try to overcome my dismay,” Luke teased. He kept his voice light as he squeezed a dollop onto his palm. “So…what’s off-limits, here?”

Poe let out a considering breath, then shrugged.

“For you, VIP access, all the perks. Backstage pass. Or. Wait–” He seemed to wince a little. “Let me rephrase. Everywhere _except_ backstage, I don’t think I can hand out those passes for a while, I’m still not over the last free-for-all– ”

Luke touched Poe's arm, reassuring, and Poe choked on a laugh, passing a hand nervously through his damp hair.

“Christ, Luke, I was doing okay, you know, I was being suave, but I think I just ruined it. Backstage pass, God. Just... kick me out now, would you,” and now they were both laughing, and this time Luke could _see_ the relief chasing the nervousness chasing the want in Poe’s eyes, and already it was better – so much better – than before.

“I’d rather just give you a shoulder massage with this _inferior_ lotion, if it’s all the same to you,” Luke said, and he leaned forward to kiss Poe lightly on the lips before reaching for his shoulders. “And in my experience, ‘suave’ is over-rated.”

.

The scar next to Poe’s backbone from the spinal fusion was the same dull red as the ones on his right thigh. As the years went by, Luke would trace them many times, as they whitened with sun and time. But this was the first time.

Poe lay belly-down, Luke astride him while he kneaded at the knots in his neck and shoulders, admiring the hard, compact planes of him; savouring the feeling of Poe unwinding under him, inch by inch. As he worked his way down, he could feel the change under his hands: the transition from hard, toned muscle giving way to softness around the small of Poe’s back.

“You said you sometimes had pain around the injury level,” Luke said doubtfully, hands hovering above the spot. “Can I–?“

“’s fine today.” Poe’s voice was muffled by the pillow. “G’ahead.”

Luke traced the shiny, raised edges of the scar with a gentle finger; Poe gave no indication of registering the touch. Perhaps the nerves there had never recovered. And again, Luke couldn’t help but remember red, raw flesh, the bite of stark black sutures.

_Squeeze my hand if you can hear me. Good, that’s great. You’re doing great._

“Everything okay back there?” came the inquiry, a little tense – as if Poe could guess where Luke’s thoughts had gone. “Or are you just admiring Dr. Tano’s handiwork?”

“I was just thinking that life is funny,” said Luke, not untruthfully. “And,” – he smoothed his hands back up Poe’s spine, to where Poe can feel him – “that you’re definitely overdoing it with the rowing. It feels like a group of Sea Cadets have been practicing their knotwork back here.”

“I keep on forgetting that you were in the Navy,” Poe mumbled. “Didn’t you grow up in a land-locked state?”

“I think I saw the sea for the first time when I was seventeen,” Luke admitted, resting his palms on Poe’s shoulders.

“Was it everything you imagined it would be?” There was no edge of sarcasm in the question; just gentle curiosity.

Luke smiled. “Better."

.

The soles of Poe’s feet were kid leather-soft, all the toughness gone into his hands. Poe was sitting up again, back braced against the wall, and his left foot in Luke’s lap. Luke worked the lotion in, pressing firmly with his thumbs, watching Poe’s face. The toes curled – just a bit – and Poe looked rather pleased with himself.

“When I press–?” Luke repeated the motion.

“Yeah," Poe nodded. "Yeah, I feel it."

“Good?”

“Not the same way that it would have felt good before,” said Poe slowly. “But – good to feel something there. And seeing you doing it feels good in another way.”

“Mm,” Luke said agreeably, wondering if he was imagining the flush on Poe’s cheeks. He’d gotten up to turn on the bedside lamp as the sun sank below the horizon, and its warm golden glow was flattering – although Poe didn’t need a kind light to look desirable, and Luke had no cherished illusions about his own body’s perfections by now.

He moved on to the right foot – and because of their email conversation, he wasn’t surprised when Poe didn’t react to the hard pressure of Luke’s thumb. But when Luke brushed the arch of his foot gently with his fingertips, experimental–

“That, that I can feel," Poe exclaimed, adding, “And I can tell your hand is warm, and slippery from the lotion. I couldn’t tell, on the left.”

Luke worked his way up both of Poe’s legs in turn, deep pressure on the left, light strokes on the right; marking tender claim on whole and ravaged flesh alike. When he came to the scar tissue on Poe’s right thigh though, though – not the clean incision line above the knee, but the place where the shattered femur had driven through the flesh above – Poe gently moved his hand away after a few moments.

“It feels like it’s coming from far away,” he said apologetically. “I can feel it there but it’s just…a little eerie. Dead.”

.

As before, Poe’s cock stirred readily when Luke took it in his hand, growing hard with a few firm strokes. Luke glanced upwards – Poe had let Luke part his legs so that he could lie between them, and had eased back onto his elbows to watch him explore.

Poe shook his head, wordlessly. Luke tried a lighter touch, a skim of fingertips on the dark velvety flesh of the crown, and was rewarded when Poe’s eyes lit up. He ran his fingers down the shaft, seeking the other spot that Poe had mentioned.

“There.” Poe's brow was furrowed, concentrating.Luke stroked again, but he pressed too hard, and must have lost the sensation because Poe was shaking his head again.

“No, not that time – lighter – yes, _there_. It’s not fireworks or anything, but it’s there,” Poe said, looking pleased.

Luke considered, then dipped his head and licked a delicate line upwards, following the path his fingers had traced. Poe’s fingers wound their way into his hair, and on impulse, Luke took him in as far as he could go. He’d had a knack for this, once.

When he pulled off, Poe was staring down at him with an unreadable expression, pupils blown wide and dark, lips slightly parted.

“Okay?” Luke asked hesitantly.

“I can feel about a tenth of it,” Poe admitted with a shaky laugh. “But it _looks_ fucking amazing.”

Luke did it again, feeling a bit of an exhibitionist, but not unpleasantly so. Then, jaw aching a little, he ran his hands up the sides of Poe’s buttocks and hips, ignoring the building ache in his own groin. There was a very specific spot he was interested in.

“You said that feeling is patchy, around the hips?” he questioned.

“There’s not much there,” Poe agreed. “Not until you get up to the, uh, the transition zone? That’s where feeling really kicks back in in a big way– _oh._ ”

“Oh?” Luke dragged his nails across Poe’s sides again, along that latitude line that had elicited such delightful shudders on the sofa. “Is there the same amount of feeling all the way around?”

“Ah, yes – a little higher on my back. But the front is…ah….” Poe’s eyes fluttered shut, as Luke played his fingers along that circumference, circling Poe’s navel. “That’s a fun spot,” Poe breathed.

“Which is better?”

Luke gently stroked the head of Poe’s cock, still wet from his ministrations, and then returned to Poe’s belly and dipped his tongue into the hollow of his navel. Poe bucked a little at the sensation; his voice, when it came, was a touch strangled:

“Both are good. Stomach is…way more intense, though.”

This time, Luke didn’t move on from that sensitive band until he’d thoroughly mapped it out with fingers and tongue, committing its borders to memory; and when he was satisfied, he circumnavigated Poe’s navel with lingering kisses.

“The other places like this,” Luke murmured against Poe’s hot skin. “Show me?”

“I’ll show you mine,” Poe promised, eyes heated under dark lashes. “If you show me yours, after.”

“Deal.”

.

“Here.”

Luke attentively followed where Poe’s fingers hesitantly traced the shell of his own ear, shadowing his actions a beat later with his own.

“And here.”

Poe’s hand slipped down his neck, to the yoke of his collarbone. He drew a line across it, as though making a benediction, a half-finished cross.

After a moment, Poe caught at Luke’s hand, and pulled it down his chest, guiding him to a nipple. “Here. _Aahh -_ go easy – just – bit sensitive.”

He wasn’t joking, either – the noises that Poe made shot straight to Luke’s cock, but he forced himself to take his time, gently coaxing the dark nubs to attention, teasing and licking. When he blew gently across Poe's chest, wet from his tongue, Poe gasped sharply and grabbed him by the ears, begging for mercy, just for a minute.

“Even if I could do this myself,” Poe panted, “I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t feel like this. Why does it always feel better when someone else does it?”

Luke propped his chin on Poe's midriff. “When I was little I always used to wonder why you couldn’t tickle yourself. I’m told it has something to do with the cerebellum spoiling the fun.”

“Brains are assholes like that,” Poe muttered. His hand found Luke’s again, hesitantly guiding. “A minute ago, when you were touching  here – and here– at the same time –”

“Like this?”

Luke had never considered himself to be particularly good at multitasking, but Poe seemed to appreciate his efforts all the same.

.

The first time that Luke made Poe come, he thought for an instant that Poe was having a spasm – his fingers tightened briefly in Luke’s hair, and his entire upper body went taut as a bowstring. But then Poe gave a bone-deep sigh and relaxed into the mattress again with a pleased hum, eyes closed and a smile playing on his lips.

He looked suspiciously like a man who’d just had a near-death experience, so to speak, despite the overwhelming lack of the usual evidence. Luke relaxed back onto his elbows, the momentary alarm fading. "Okay up there?”

“ _God_ , yes,” Poe breathed after a moment, lissom against the bank of pillows. When he opened his eyes, they were sparkling with delight. “You weren’t even touching anything down there just now, were you," he said, wonderingly.

In point of fact, Luke had been leaving a tracery of little circles around Poe’s waist with a finger while giving very stern attention to one nipple for at least the last minute. "Not...as such," he admitted, unable to prevent a smile of uncomplicated pride from stealing across his face.

“God,” Poe said again, then: “I feel like I’ve just immaculately conceived.”

“Call me the spirit of the Lord,” Luke said, grinning up at him, and Poe laughed rich and warm.

“I’ll call you anything you want if you’ll get up here,” he said, tugging at him. Luke attempted to oblige, but one of his legs was asleep from being folded under his weight; he half-fell into Poe’s embrace, and Poe missed his mouth with the first kiss. Poe located it on the second and confirmed the find with the third, strong arms winding around him, and Luke felt very, very content, although –

“I know you said not to worry about whether we both got off or not, " Poe said, looking down at Luke’s own neglected cock, half-hard but stiffening against Poe’s stomach with the friction of skin on skin. “But would you like a hand with that?”

Luke incredulous glare was somewhat at odds with the moan that escaped him as a warm, calloused palm closed around his length and stroked him sweet and sure.

“And yes,” Poe said into Luke’s mouth, kissing him through it as he spilled into his hand. “That _was_ meant to be a really terrible pun.”

.

"You said it felt different from before," Luke said presently, brain muzzy. “The orgasm, I mean. Different how?"

They were side-lying, chest to chest, one of Poe’s legs draped across Luke’s hip. The sun had long since set, and the lamp behind Poe cast his face into soft shadows.

“It’s hard to describe. It sort of goes…..head-down. It’s – buzzy? But in a nice way. And instead of feeling tired, after, I feel like I could get up and run a marathon. Well, not run.” Poe's mouth twisted, but the bitterness wasn't there.

“Really?” Luke asked, a little dismayed, and Poe chuckled and kissed his knuckles.

“Don’t worry, I’m down to cuddle, too.”

“Oh, good,” Luke sighed. “That’s about all I’m good for, after.”

“You didn’t show me yours, you know.”

Luke blinked at him. “What?”

“Your very special spots, Luke. Aside from the obvious very special spot – ”

“Oh. Feet.”

Now it was Poe's turn to blink. “What?”

“Feet.”

Poe’s brow furrowed. “You like to have your feet touched?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Poe appeared to consider this, then said slowly, “I know exactly how I’m going to wake you up in the morning.”

The barest edge of a growl in his voice sent heat pooling at the base of Luke’s spine, and he smiled into Poe's shoulder, breathing him in. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“Are all nurses this cuddly?”

“Just me,” sighed Luke. “You can run your marathon when I’m asleep. T minus two minutes. And, for future reference –“

“Yes?”

Luke finished his second, monstrous yawn. "I'm the little spoon," he said, matter-of-fact. "And I like the left side of the bed. But I'll take the right side just this once."

.

That first time, it ended with Luke's spine pressed against Poe's chest and Poe's lips in his hair, and with a strong sense of finding his moorings. The other occasions tended to become whirled up together in Luke's memory with the other stuff of life, although some moments hung distilled in his mind, suspended in place and time like drops of amber, like–

– The following spring, when Luke is studying for his Anatomy and Physiology lab final and Poe acquiesces to be covered from the neck down with edible-ink labels for muscle groups and bones (and of course, in return, Luke ends up with doodles of fighter jets in embarrassing places) –

and

– A winter’s morning in the desert, BB licking Luke's toes where they're poking out from the coverlet, and Luke is mumbling, still half asleep, _Fuck's sake, knock it off, Poe_ , and Poe is guffawing, loudly, from the doorway –

and

– Luke is sliding a ring onto Poe's cock, keeping him hot and hard as he sinks down around him in the pre-dawn light, sweat breaking out on his skin as he rides him, Poe's fingers digging into his thighs hard enough to bruise –

and

– The renovations of Luke's bungalow finally finished (Orson has sent the last crewman home, stiff-legged with terror, before being firmly escorted from the premises by Galen), Luke is lazily tracing Poe's ribs with his finger, after they've woken up in _their_ house, in _their_ bed –

and

_–_ Poe is in his chair, still wet from the swimming pool, lazily watching Luke move through a vinyasa on his mat by the water's edge; BB bounding up out of the water and ignoring their shouts of dismay to shake joyfully all over them both –

and

_–_ Poe has just seen his father for the first time in four years, and is pressing Luke down onto the mattress, desperately seeking reassurance against the familiarity of Luke's skin, and Luke gives it to him, whatever he needs –

and

_–_ The summer of Gita's sister's wedding, and they’re lying in bed, examining the mehndi on Poe's hands, inscribed by enthusiastic cousins, and _I think those are your initials_ , Poe is saying, pointing out the unfamiliar symbols tucked into the design (and even after the ink fades, Luke has the odd feeling that he’s still written on Poe's skin, and Poe on his).

.

_“I think that’s a wrap,” Jyn pronounces, snapping the lens cover back on the camera. “Let me know if you want to supervise the editing. That’s the boring bit, though.”_

_“We definitely want to,” says Poe, in the same breath that Luke replies, ‘No, that’s all right, we trust you completely’._

_“Okay,_ I _trust you completely,” Luke amends, raising his eyebrows. ‘Poe’s the suspicious sort, I guess.”_

_“I trust her!” Poe protests. “But as long as we’re putting this thing out there, I want to see it through. If you don’t mind,” he says to Jyn._

_“Not at all,” she shrugs. “It’s your film, I just held the camera.” Galen Erso’s daughter is not a naturally warm and fuzzy sort – more used to capturing riots in far-flung places like Mustafar and Scarif than domestic scenes in the living rooms of suburban bungalows. Luke finds that he likes her, though; she reminds him in some ways of Rey._

_“And for that, we can’t thank you enough,” Luke says quickly. “Are you sure we can’t compensate you for your time, Jyn?”_

_“Thanks, but no – this is a favour for Dad,” she says, folding her tripod. “He says it should have been made twelve years ago, when Orson was injured.” Her tone is carefully neutral; from what Luke has heard from Poe, the Erso family dynamics are...complicated, and old fractures are still healing._

_“Besides,” Jyn adds, with a sudden, quick grin, “This was fun. A sex and disability Q and A is rather a nice change from my usual sort of gig. It’s always nice when no one’s shouting or threatening to set their dogs on me.”_

_“Not unless you count BB, anyway,” Poe says, pulling himself into his chair from the couch._

_The labrador has been long since banished to the backyard for crimes against film-making, which included squeaking her favourite ball from behind the couch at a crucial moment during Luke’s explanation of the pros and cons of penile constriction rings versus oral erectile dysfunction medications. “Your devastating comedic timing is_ not _appreciated,” Poe had informed her, and showed her out firmly, sad-eyed, while Luke rocked silently with laughter on the couch. Jyn hadn’t batted an eyelid, mouth quirking almost imperceptibly._

_“Well, if we can’t tempt you with filthy lucre, there’s cold beer in the fridge,” Poe offers. “Stay and have a drink?”_

_“Love to.”_

_While Poe heads for the kitchen, Luke confesses, “This seems a bit of an awkward way to meet someone properly for the first time, but...we’ve heard a lot about you.”_

_Jyn laughs. “Dad’s Danish, Luke – I grew up in a house without a lot of hang-ups about these things. And filming is how I meet a lot of people.” She looks around at their living room – this time not with an eye for where to set the camera, but with curiosity. “Thank you both for having me here,” she adds, giving a little nod. Appreciative. “This is...really lovely.”_

_Luke looks around, too – at the red and yellow walls; Luke’s old Dagobahan wall hanging; the art he and Poe had brought back from Mandalore the summer previously. Poe’s red couch. The guitars in their stands. A colourful, lop-sided clay bowl presented to them by Jai, Poe’s nephew, just turned six. A whole pile of framed photos, taken down for the video, but soon to people the shelves again with the faces of their families and friends._

_The_ bric-a-brac _of a life, shared._

_“Thank you,” Luke says, sincerely. “We like it.”_

_Poe rolls up behind him with the drinks, and slips his hand into his. “It was a custom job.”_

**__ **

 

 


End file.
